The Doors – In the Dark About the Bass Player
- Place – Isle of Wight Festival
- Time – Saturday 29th August 1970
- Artist – The Doors
Late on the Saturday evening we were receiving a lot of feedback in the truck that the Doors were refusing to go on stage.
This wasn’t unusual as there were many bands during the festival that were having heavy discussions with the organisers about various issues, but mostly money.
The Doors were unhappy about being filmed but finally agreed to appear but only if the stage lights were turned off. They believed this would render any film footage useless.
The Doors opened with the song “Back Door Man”. Once they had started within a few minutes Vic told me the bass mic wasn’t picking up any bass guitar, obviously a problem.
He told me to get up on stage as fast as I could and tell Neville to sort it out.
The problem was that there were no stage lights on so took me sometime to find Nev in the darkness. When I finally found my way over to Nev he told me to back and tell Vic, “They don’t have a bass player.”
I went back to Vic and told him exactly what Nev told me.
Vic said
“Get back up there and tell Neville not to be so fucking stupid and fix the bloody mic.”
So I fumbled my way back up on to the stage, found Nev in the darkness and relayed Vic’s displeasure.
But Neville stuck to his guns and maintained they didn’t have a bass player.
Once again, I ran back to the truck and I reported back to Vic, again repeating what Nev had told me. I was beginning to feel a little like an umpire at a tennis match.
I think this dogged determination to pass on information on the lack of bass player Vic jumped out of the truck, stormed up on to the stage and appeared alongside Nev.
About to vent his anger at the unsuspecting Nev he looked over at the band and then the penny dropped.
He realised the keyboard player was playing all the bass lines with his left hand!
So, it turned out the bass guitar mic was as redundant as a bass player in the Doors.
I think there was a huge amount of pressure on Vic throughout this festival to record everything properly, after all you only get one shot at doing it. But Vic, being the total professional didn’t really show it.
Apart from Chicago and Miles Davis he recorded every other artist appearing at that festival and was responsible for every recording.
Wow!
I would like to thank Neville Crozier for his help with these Isle of Wight posts
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.